ODEI AL-MAGUT

I work between jazz, hip-hop, and music from across the world. Not because I’m trying to cross genres, but because those are the sounds I grew up around, and the ones that move me. 

I was born into a Russian-Syrian family and grew up between Russia, Greece, and Syria. When you live in that many places as a kid, it all becomes part of you. Every country has its own voice on the streets, its own way people talk to each other, its own friendships, its own energy when night falls. You start to notice how humans connect differently depending on where they are, what they show, what they hide, what they share. All of that shapes the way you hear music and the way you carry yourself. 

Later I lived in New York for a year, and I’m now based in the Netherlands. Touring has taken me across the US, the UK, Morocco, and most of Europe. After a while you realize borders matter less than you thought. Meeting people through music, in places far from where you came from, you start to feel like a global citizen in the most genuine sense. 

I started out in jazz. Studied it seriously, played it for years, still play it. But the more I worked, the more I felt pulled toward other things. Hip-hop, funk, rock, electronic production. My Syrian side kept coming up in the music too, harder to ignore with time. So I started producing my own music and building my own projects. 

Alongside performing, I’m developing two ongoing concepts: 

Wild Brass and Black Safran. Wild Brass started with my brother in music, Salman Abuev, a trumpet player from Dagestan. Same fire, same ear for the streets. It came out of a shared love for hip-hop and live instrumentation, built on one idea: hip-hop gains real weight when it breathes with live instruments. Not rap over beats, but rap inside a band. Brass, rhythm section, and rappers in a single live body, where improvisation is the core language, not decoration. 

Black Safran is rooted in my Syrian background. It draws from the melodies, rhythms, and textures of Arabic music and places them at the center of contemporary sound rather than at its edges. I’m working with hip-hop, rock, house, and electronic production, reshaped through a language grounded in Arabic tradition. It isn’t fusion. It’s about letting that tradition lead. 

I’m also part of Gallowstreet, the Amsterdam based brass collective known for genre defying live shows across Europe and beyond. We’re currently developing Futurebrass, a new direction that fuses brass with electronic production and brings the brass band format firmly into the 21st century. 

Over the years I’ve worked as a sideman across very different worlds. From traditional jazz to hip-hop, rock, and music from around the globe, with The Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the NDR Big Band, Tijn Wybenga’s Brainteaser Orchestra, and Motown legends The Temptations and The Four Tops, among many others. That path took me to stages from Carnegie Hall to North Sea Jazz, Lowlands, and Paradiso, and shaped me as a musician across very different scenes and projects. 

These days I keep performing, composing, and collaborating. Leading Wild Brass, developing Black Safran, touring with Gallowstreet, and working as a musician and producer across different projects and scenes.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​